


Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Heat Nor Gloom of Night...

by owlaholic68



Category: Monsterhearts (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: (minor background npc), Bisexual Female Character, Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Pre-Canon, time to explain Sabine's mail fetish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: Sabine has an obsession with mail.
Kudos: 2





	Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Heat Nor Gloom of Night...

**Author's Note:**

> ah I realized that not everyone is from Michigan/Midwest. A "party store" is a local small liquor store.
> 
> My Mortal character accidentally developed an obsession with the mail, so here's a fic to make up some backstory as to why lol. Omg the amount of time that we have spent discussing the postal system...

Sabine’s first crush was on the mail carrier.

They were just so dedicated. Good at their job, professional and courteous, always on time. Handled small letters and heavy deliveries with ease.

“My daughter wanted to ask you something,” Sabine’s mother prompts one day. She nudges Sabine forward.

“Yes?” The mail carrier pauses and smiles. “Hello, dear.”

“Hi…” Sabine chews on the end of her hair. She was no more than five or six years old. “Um, what’s your name?”

“My name is Gene,” they say. “What is your name?”

“S-Sabine.” She looks to her mother for guidance. “Um, nice to meet you.”

She flees to her bedroom, face hot with a blush. A strange urge to cry.

* * *

One day a different mail carrier comes.

“Where’s Gene?” Sabine pipes up. She was working in the store now, a whole seven years old. Old enough that she’d begged her mother for a job to do. Mother gave her the important task of cleaning the party store front windows, reasoning that she wasn’t _technically_ working in the store itself.

This is a different mail carrier. A nervous-looking young man who keeps fumbling with his bag. “Um, they won’t be covering your route anymore. I – I’m Paul, I’ll be your new carrier. For now.”

“Why?”

“B-Because Gene can’t cover this route anymore.”

Sabine was too young and naïve to recognize Paul’s facial expression, the way he sighed and looked to the side, eyes haunted. “Why not?”

“I – I’m sorry,” Paul tries to skitter by her into the store.

“Why are you sorry?”

“That – that’s just what you’re supposed to say when, when um…” Paul looks very awkward. “Look, kid-”

“Sabine-”

“Look, Sabine, I don’t know how to explain this. They – They just can’t, okay? They can’t.” Paul sighs again. “Listen, I will tell your mother and then she can tell you.”

Sabine pouts. “Fine, Paul.”

She watches Paul go inside and speak to her mother. Mother pales and puts a hand over her mouth. There are tears in her eyes. Her gaze darts over to Sabine, who quickly pretends she wasn’t looking.

Her stomach isn’t feeling so great all of a sudden. She knows that look on her mother’s face; it’s the same one that shows up whenever the news turns on to talk about Feral attacks. It’s the look when somebody’s died.

Sabine doesn’t ask her mother what happened to Gene the lovely mail carrier. She doesn’t have to.

* * *

The city shuts down for an emergency. Sabine is still too young to fully understand what’s going on, only that they need to stay inside. School is cancelled – her younger brother is thrilled, too young to even realize that it’s not cancelled for a fun reason.

A Feral problem, the news says. Her mother is deliberately keeping the news off, but Sabine has been able to gather that much.

Sabine is shocked the first morning when the mail doesn’t arrive.

“No mail again?” She comments the next day.

“No mail,” her mom confirms. She looks tired, busy organizing deliveries to customers to keep the party store afloat. “Probably won’t have it for a week.”

“No, no…” Sabine doesn’t know why that’s suddenly so important to her. The mail _always_ comes, and it comes on time. Same time every day without fail with the exception of holidays, which were special days because the mail didn’t come. A holiday wasn’t a _holiday_ unless it included a mail service interruption.

She runs up to her room and locks the door behind her, buries herself in her bed. Stays there for hours until her grandma coaxes her down for dinner.

The mail can’t _not_ come. That – that’s not right, that’s not normal, it’s not a holiday…

Her mother’s prediction was correct; they would not receive mail for over a week. Sabine cries every morning when she opens the mailbox to find it still empty.

Not a normal week. No mail meant that something was _wrong._

* * *

Sabine is old enough now to understand things like the importance of having a permanent address.

She has to fill out forms for school and they _always_ ask for it. It’s important enough to be one of the first things on the forms. Official forms, unofficial forms, surveys, they all ask for your address. They want to send you mail because it’s _important._

One of her friends has fallen upon rough times. Her friend and his parents are living out of their car. They do not have a permanent address. They cannot receive mail.

They have a P.O. box instead. Important enough that even now, even with everything they’re going through, they still need to receive mail.

It is an indication of normalcy. It is a sign that everything is alright.

Sabine is so happy for her friend when his family gets assistance and gets into an apartment. They have an address. She’s the first to send them a card with a gift card to a local home décor store. She can imagine their joy at being able to open a mailbox and have something waiting, their relief at knowing they have somewhere that is consistent.

Or maybe that’s just her. Maybe they’re just happy to have a roof over their heads.

* * *

Love letters are a rare relic these days. Even rarer to receive one in the mail instead of given in person.

“Who’s that from?” Her grandma slyly asks.

“I don’t know.” Sabine turns over the letter. It’s sealed with a glittery heart sticker and addressed to her. She opens it to reveal similarly cute stationery and quickly scans the letter. “It’s not signed. It’s anonymous.”

Her heart leaps. An anonymous love letter? She excuses herself and takes it up to her bedroom to read more carefully.

 _Dear Sabine,_ it starts.

_I think you’re the prettiest girl in our class and I would love to kiss you but I’m so scared and shy and I don’t know how to talk to other girls and I’m worried you don’t like me. I just wanted you to know that you’re wonderful and your boyfriend doesn’t deserve you and I love you. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this in person. I’m sorry but I love you._

_Respectfully,_

_Your Secret Admirer._

Secret Admirer? Sabine holds the paper and envelope close and breathes in deeply. There is a faint smell of smoke, like bonfire smoke, like fresh-cut wood. Whoever could this be from?

Jacquelyn, maybe. No, she smells like lavender hand lotion. Maybe Jessie but Jessie would just tell her, Jessie did kiss her on the cheek that one time at lunch.

She pauses to admire the letter again, re-live that thrill of excitement of finding it the mailbox. She got mail from an anonymous lover and she got to open it and wonder at it! It’s a like a wonderful mystery!

Sabine closely inspects every person at school the next day. Someone in her class, certainly, and another girl based on the wording of “other girls”.

She gets her answer when she corners Yanda, the shy girl who sits in the back of the class and works on her parent’s farm on the weekends. Yanda has strong arms from cutting wood and it only takes a bit of encouragement before she’s holding Sabine close with those arms and kissing her like she’s the only thing that matters.

“You sent me a love letter,” Sabine sighs wistfully when they’re laying together one night star-gazing.

Yanda blushes. “It – it was very cliché of me, wasn’t it?”

“It was but I _loved_ it. That was the most wonderful thing that anyone has _ever_ done for me, Yanda.” Sabine twirls a bit of her hair. “An anonymous love letter. Delivered in the mail. How wonderful, how romantic. How exciting. Things like that are so important to me.”

She doesn’t dare admit that she has that letter saved among the most precious of her possessions. Even after they inevitably break up, she still keeps it there. Still treasures it far more than any other memory of that relationship.

* * *

The twins don’t have an address where they can get mail and that _devastates_ Sabine.

It’s silly, especially with everything else going on. Delta doesn’t have his pelt but Sabine is worried about the _mail?_

But she is worried.

It means that – that they don’t belong. That they’re not accepted. There’s an implication that they don’t have anyone who cares enough to send them mail. They don’t have anybody looking out for them who cares that they can’t fill out all the essential forms that ask for an address.

You can’t put “by the lake in the woods” as your address on tax forms.

Not being able to get mail means that _you don’t exist._

* * *

Not being able to get mail also means that something is _wrong._

Sabine has no idea how to ask her new friend Pierce why they lived in a freezer with a bunch of scientists. She suspects that they weren’t allowed to leave. She suspects that that was not a good environment for them. But she has no idea how to ask.

“Do you – did you get mail?” She asks instead. Because that is what it means to properly exist. That is what it means to have a normal good life. You get your mail on time.

Pierce did not get mail. Pierce does not know what mail is. Sabine decides she will not let them go back to wherever they came from. She can unpack the rest later, but for now she knows that Pierce did not get mail and therefore Pierce’s life was not right.

She gives them mail. A good start to a fresh life. A life that will have everything good that Pierce deserves. Mail is just the first thing.

Mail is just the baseline. Everyone who exists can send and receive mail. It always comes and it always comes _on time._ You can depend on it. It’s the only thing you _can_ depend on these days.

Mail means that life is okay.


End file.
